What's so confusing, when you wait, that unit wait until all enemy stacks moved. If they choose to wait too, then the speed is priority, the fastest -from those waiting- will move last. If both sides have same fastest creature, the one attacking moves first.
____________All my Era II mods

I'm pretty new to HotA and while I am enjoying it, it's hard to follow up what has happened in the past. I searched as good I could but if I dupe report a bug, pls forgive me.

Currently I'm playing 1.3.8 with HD+ 3.811 build 3:

I think the reverse order when troops wait is incorrect. In H3 it has a bug (I consider it a bug) when own troops with same speed wait, the reverse order after waits is not reverse (I hope it's clear what I am trying to say )
But I think in HotA if my troop acts prior to the enemy creature with the same speed and we both wait, the order is not reversed.
I was now trying to prove, but in a quick test map I created the enemy don't want to wait...

Also I think that the original Heroes 3 initiatives is buggy, I always considered it buggy. If I have the same speed as the fastest creature and I attack, I start, but if I have the fastest creature, I start, but same speed creatures always come first from the enemy. Every creature!
If both sides have equal speed creatures as fastest creature, in the first round all of my creatures come first, after that however, always enemy creatures with the same speed come first.
I noticed that when some stacks are killed, the order may change again.
I think the speed order is complex and sometimes not really straight forward.

Not sure if you want to look into that, but an initiative bar like in newer hereoes, to see who comes next, would be very handy. Even though I still think the engine of this could be improved to be more logical.
What do you think?

I guess that you misunderstand how the system works. Creatures that have higher speed have their turn faster (which is logical). But when you wait - your goal is to wait for other creatures to have their turn and then make your move. And faster creatures can wait longer, because they are kinda capable to make their move faster before round ends. That is why after wait the order is reversed.

When you and your enemy have creatures of equal speed they take turns one after another. I.e. if your creature (of any speed) just had its turn and then it is time for equally fast creatures (let's say of speed 7), then the enemy's top creature with 7th speed will have its turn. Then as enemy's creature just had the move, your creature with 7th speed will get the opportunity, e.t.c. In the beginning of the battle if your fastest creature has equal speed to one of your enemy then whoever initiated the battle has an upper hand. But just for that first move. Then it all returns to taking turns one after another. Not so complex when you get used to it.

Basically, whenever the game decides which creature is going to have its turn, it will scan all creatures present and only consider those that have not yet acted and aren't waiting. From among them, it finds the creatures with the highest initiative.

If there are more creatures tied for highest initiative in that subset of creatures, it will follow a few basic rules to determine which one goes first:
- If it's the very first creature to move this combat, the attacker gets priority over the defender;
- In any other subsequent moves, the player, who didn't own the previous creature that had its action, gets priority and this is carried over between combat rounds (so if you acted last in the previous combat round and are tied for highest initiative with the enemy at the start of the current combat round, the enemy gets priority over you - combined with the wait command, this usually swaps priority order between you and the AI, as the AI doesn't wait at lower difficulties);
- If the player who's turn it is has multiple creatures tied for highest initiative, the game looks at the followup order of the stacks in the Hero's paperdoll screen: the leftmost of those creatures tied for highest initiative moves first;

Each time a creature acted, the next one is determined again through the above rules. This means that temporary effects (like Haste or Slow - but also a stack getting un-blinded for instance!) can take effect and change the follow-up order during the combat round.

When the wait command is issued, the stack waiting is actually added to the end of the line, in reversed order (if multiple creatures are waiting). I am not entirely sure, but I think that when the game starts to go through the pool of waiting creatures, the same priority considerations are used as detailed above (seeing as it applies between combat rounds, too). Would need to really check ingame to see if it's not the other way around, that the priority order isn't also reversed, but I doubt that.

Another thing: Mighty Gorgon death stare - afaik it gives 10% pro each creature in stack to take another enemy when attacking.
So 5 MG would take 1 creature with 50% and 27 would take 2 for sure and a 3rd with 70% chance.
Now in HotA I had cases when more than 10 MGs didn't take any (death stare didn't trigger). Was this nerfed? And if so why? This was the only real good creature you could always count on in fortress... now it comes down to luck... and this ability was only useful against lvl6/7. Making it not always triggering nerfes an already week faction IMHO.
Though I can't recall seeing this in the change logs.

Sorry about this, tested this too. I really should learn this game again. It seems in SoD it never granted a 100% even though I totally remembered the rule above :S

Really? That sounds weird to me, any other spell decrease spell cost at basic level with same amount as the level of the spell, but teleports cost is halved from basic to advanced and halved again from advanced to expert. There is a big difference from 15 to 3 mana and again it's a level 3 spell...

IMHO the two most powerful spells are really haste and slow Of course with expert air/earth.
Since you can only teleport one creature and in big battles you barely have mana problems, I don't really mind it. No big diff would 5-10 mana make. But it has to have some advantage compared to basic water... and with this spell the only advance you can make is really to lower the mana cost.

I would more like to see to nerf expert hast/slow... so for instance only the two nearest unit to the one whom you cast it on would get it applied and not all units... Or area effect...
But probably that will remain a dream forever as ppl love mass haste and slow

maurice said:Basically, whenever the game decides which creature is going to have its turn, it will scan all creatures present and only consider those that have not yet acted and aren't waiting. From among them, it finds the creatures with the highest initiative.
...
When the wait command is issued, the stack waiting is actually added to the end of the line, in reversed order (if multiple creatures are waiting). I am not entirely sure, but I think that when the game starts to go through the pool of waiting creatures, the same priority considerations are used as detailed above (seeing as it applies between combat rounds, too). Would need to really check ingame to see if it's not the other way around, that the priority order isn't also reversed, but I doubt that.

I am reading slowly, but this is a very good explanation. Thanks. This is mostly what I do expect.
But sometimes it's difficult to have this in mind I assume
Also to see whose next would be easier to filter bugs I suppose...
As I said, I think (and can't prove, even on impossible in my test AI wouldn't want to wait, I should make my 1v1 test) HotA has a bug in reverse order...
But now I really want to test so I dbl check and come back.
But at least I'm enlightened with this explanation on the normal case

EDIT: OK, I've now quickly tested it in 1v1. 2 castle heroes (not sir Mullich) with the very same creature stacks from lvl 1 to 6.
After every creature waited, the reverse order was actually not reverse (no one acted). But then I tested in SoD... well and it was the same. After everyone waited, the order was not reversed

So sorry for the hussle... Maybe I should learn finally to play H3? But I am now really confused about when same speed creatures come + wait depending on what the previous creature acted.
Also the question arises, if it makes for instance any difference if a creature gains same speed through modifiers?
I'd think if I have a speed 11 unit compared to speed 9 with cape of velocity, who is now 11, the modified speed should be taken "slower"?
Or whatever...
I am definitely wishing a GUI showing the order...

This bug is since version 1.3.8. It's constant bug in the spellbook of all heroes. It's not gamebraking bug but it's quite annoying.

Hm. You should probably download update once more. This bug is fixed since like 1.3.3. Probably something went wrong during previous updating. But anyway - could you provide the way you installed HotA. (over SoD, Complete or as a standalone and if you did update it then was it manual or autoupdate)

This bug is since version 1.3.8. It's constant bug in the spellbook of all heroes. It's not gamebraking bug but it's quite annoying.

Hm. You should probably download update once more. This bug is fixed since like 1.3.3. Probably something went wrong during previous updating. But anyway - could you provide the way you installed HotA. (over SoD, Complete or as a standalone and if you did update it then was it manual or autoupdate)

Something strange: The bug is in SoD and not in HotA. My installation is SoD (I think 3.2.) and manual installation over it of HotA version 1.3.8. I'm now with win7 64bit and I pointed the installer where to install HotA because it shows different path from which win7 uses to install Heroes3. My installation is clear. Completely new windows installation. SoD and over it only version 1.3.8, no previous HotA version, no WoG, no nothing.

Eh? Well, yes, it is a bug of SoD. Which is fixed in HotA. Did you encounter it in HotA or did you report about encountering a bug in SoD?

No, I can not call it SoD bug because for so many years I never have this bug before. It's appeared since I installed HotA 1.3.8. Both on my new system and on my old system, one with win7 and one with winXP. I'll say it that way: it's a HotA bug which affects SoD but not HotA. It's up to you whether you take this bug report seriously or not.

Eh? Well, yes, it is a bug of SoD. Which is fixed in HotA. Did you encounter it in HotA or did you report about encountering a bug in SoD?

No, I can not call it SoD bug because for so many years I never have this bug before. It's appeared since I installed HotA 1.3.8. Both on my new system and on my old system, one with win7 and one with winXP. I'll say it that way: it's a HotA bug which affects SoD but not HotA. It's up to you whether you take this bug report seriously or not.

The only explanation is that you had some rare version of SoD without this bug and then you have installed the full version of HotA in the same folder instead of an empty one. Only the regular version (links to which are in the first post) is to be installed on top of clean SoD. Full version (links to which are long deleted in eng-speaking communities) is to be installed into an empty folder. If you install full version into a folder with SoD, then it could replace some of original files with those from most widespread version, which contains the bug.

Eh? Well, yes, it is a bug of SoD. Which is fixed in HotA. Did you encounter it in HotA or did you report about encountering a bug in SoD?

No, I can not call it SoD bug because for so many years I never have this bug before. It's appeared since I installed HotA 1.3.8. Both on my new system and on my old system, one with win7 and one with winXP. I'll say it that way: it's a HotA bug which affects SoD but not HotA. It's up to you whether you take this bug report seriously or not.

The only explanation is that you had some rare version of SoD without this bug and then you have installed the full version of HotA in the same folder instead of an empty one. Only the regular version (links to which are in the first post) is to be installed on top of clean SoD. Full version (links to which are long deleted in eng-speaking communities) is to be installed into an empty folder. If you install full version into a folder with SoD, then it could replace some of original files with those from most widespread version, which contains the bug.

No, I have never installed the full version of HotA - I mean the one that is about 433 mb, although I downloaded both versions - 433 mb and 143 mb. The story with the installation path is that in WinXP HotA installs into the default SoD folder. But in Win7 64bit the default SoD folder is a little bit different (something like this Crogram Files (x86)3DOHeroes3) and you have to point the HotA installer to the new folder. In fact I was surprised that the bug is only in SoD and not in HotA because I never have it in SoD before version 1.3.8 of HotA. The other issue is that I rarely install patch 3.2 but I'm almost sure that the bug is not caused by the SoD patch because I am not installing it for the first time.
The new thing in 1.3.8 is that you put together the Russian and the English versions of HotA. You most probably use the Russian localized version of SoD which could be the original bringer of the bug and somehow after the combining of the two language versions - the Russian and the English, the bug appears in the combined version of HotA. All this explanation is a pure speculation till further investigation of the problem but is the only one with which I could come at this point.

Probably you should run launcher as administrator or edit Heroes 3 directory permissions (enable all of them).
Anyway, you always can manually update HotA. Just install the last version (http://download.h3hota.com/HotA_setup) over previous. Also you can disable auto-update in launcher if it doesn't work properly for you.